[MCR] Rockies Ice Climbing - Cascade Falls, Professor Falls, Louise Falls, Guinness Gully

[Public Mountain Conditions Report]

Hey there,On a day off yesterday, Clint Winterhalt and I had a great day out climbing Cascade Falls, Professor Falls, Louise Falls, and Guinness Gully. Here's a bit on the what we saw the conditions doing while we were out.
Cascade Falls was great, and seemed like a reasonable day to go given the forecasts. We got there early (before the forecasted precip) yesterday morning and planned to get up and off fast as we could. We were back at the car before it started snowing around 830 or so. The middle third of the route has a fair bit amount of old avalanche debris covering it right now, but not so much so that we payed any less attention to what was still overhead. Travel over the debris was both faster and a lot more comfortable than the usual low angle crampon'ing you have to do in the middle third of the route which was a nice change. The upper two pitches had good climbing, protected well, and as the last pitch has fattened up to the point where the climbing seems like it's getting easier.
We ran over grabbed a coffee after that and then ran into Professor Falls. Barry summed it up in his post yesterday, so no need to say much more - if I could add anything... don't forget the gore-tex, and bring a bunch of extra gloves. We were saturated when we got back down. Fun climbing though on mostly plastic ice.
After that we drove down to Louise Falls in Lake Louise - Good karma to the man driving the horse-drawn sleigh back to the route as he saved us 30min. of walking I'm sure. The Route was in good shape here too. Seemed like the line right up the middle into the cave minimized the exposure to the hang fire on the roof of the cave the most effectively. Theres still some big daggers hanging on both far climbers left and right. The second pitch (from the first snow ledge to the cave) has healed a fair bit from last weeks traffic, and you do actually have to swing most of the way for placements. From the cave up was awesome, semi fragile hooking up the pillar with big buckets to finish up the climbers left side into the trees at the top. If you ran into a traffic jam in the cave i'm sure you could manage to climb lines on the left side of the left pillar, and the left side of the right hand pillar looks climbable too, but has substantially less support around the base than the left hand options. Good screws the whole way, and totally dry on the line we took.
Another coffee in Lake Louise, then down the hill to Field to climb Guinness Gully. No avalanche debris to speak of anywhere on the route. The first pitch took 16cm's screws the whole way, and being a bit fatter than I've seen it in the past few years was still the usual hooking fiesta right to the top. Second pitch was also a bit bigger than usual and as a result you get a few extra meters of steeper climbing which was nice. The third pitch was pretty standard, a bit of hooking here and there, but just good fun climbing on the whole. The second pitch was a bit damp but other than that dry top to bottom.
We didn't see it snow any harder the 1cm/hr, but it did keep up all day. Kept a pretty close eye on ridge top winds and they seemed to remain calm throughout the day, even the clouds aloft seemed to be lazily rolling through the sky at the upper elevations. Temperatures averaging around -4*C range for most of the day. 
Roads from Field to Lake Louise looked bare... but really slick. Scariest part of the day just driving home.
Have fun out there!

Mike TrehearneAlpine Guide / Asst. Ski Guidewww.yamnuska.commike at cloudnineguides.com
Clinton WinterhaltAssistant Rock Guideclint at cloudnineguides.com





 

 		 	   		  
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